Nearly 10 million Americans are blind or suffer visual impairment due to glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathies. These diseases are all due to the loss of one or more retinal cell type and according to the most recent statistics represent 36% of the existing cases of legal blindness in the United States. Every year an additional 230,000 patients are diagnosed with these diseases. Current treatments can slow disease progression, but cannot replace lost retinal cells.
The isolation of retinal neurons from the adult retina provided an opportunity to perform electrophysiological experiments that is virtually impossible in the intact retina. Transplantation of retinal cells, especially adult retinal stem cells, have been used in the treatment for diseases involving the loss of retinal neurons, such as glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, and age macular degeneration. However, successful use of adult retinal cells for research and transplantation has been impeded by the difficulty in propagating and maintaining these cells. Following isolation, retinal cells remain viable for only a couple of days thereby limiting the use of the majority of cells that were obtained as a result of the retinal dissociation. Therefore, there still exists a need for new methods for of isolating, storing and retrieving functional mature retinal cells.